


Assets

by new_kate



Category: Captain America (Movies), Weiß Kreuz
Genre: Assassins, Brainwashing, Crossover, Domestic Fluff, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Memory Loss, Mental Health Issues, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-10
Updated: 2015-03-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:19:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3520367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/new_kate/pseuds/new_kate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary: Schwartz meet the Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Assets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Puddingcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puddingcat/gifts).



> This is for Puddingcat the magnificent who wanted an AU where HYDRA is Rosenkreuz.
> 
> Many thanks to [louise_lux](http://archiveofourown.org/users/louise_lux) for the beta!

There is no mission.

He waits. He’s a soldier, he’s patient. Without the mission to hold him together his mind is an open, jagged wound. He doesn’t talk, doesn’t ask to be briefed even when the noise in his head turns into an endless high-pitched keening. He leans against the straps, flexes his shoulder so the metal edges bite into his skin, but the pain isn’t sharp enough to calm him.

There’s a stream of people in the room, a lot of talk. Nothing about the mission.

“He’s been debriefed. He can’t remember. We scrubbed him clean, we weren’t told!”

“They’re sending a specialist.”

“A freak? This is pointless. Don’t you understand, the memories don’t exist anymore. Until he’s briefed he’s barely responsive…”

He is. Barely intelligent, barely aware, barely a solid object. His insides quiver. His arm itches. He needs a mission.

Someone leans toward him. Winter Soldier sets his jaw so he wouldn’t bite his tongue when he’s hit.

“Easy, easy,” the man murmurs. German accent. Some wild part of the Winter Soldier lurches and twitches at the sound. Civilian, he thinks at first. Gaudy clothes, skinny arms, long hair. Then he meets the man’s eyes and knows - no, not a civilian. Of course not.

“Here’s your mission, puppy,” the man says. “You do what I say. You do your damn best for me.”

That kind of mission, then. He’ll have to roll with the flow and wait for the next command, be posed and moved like a puppet until his handlers get bored. He’s been hoping for another kind of work, to be pointed at the mark and set loose until he’s done and has to be debriefed. But orders are orders.

He stares into the man’s bright blue eyes, waiting. There’s a silence between them and around them, and it slowly creeps into his head, fills the void there. There’s a feeling that something is touching the edges of his thoughts - just like tonguing a spot where your tooth fell out, worrying at the ragged, slick flesh, tasting blood.

“I can work with this,” the man says. There’s a commotion in the room. It doesn’t disturb the peace. Winter Soldier is quiet, inside and out, as if his soul has been injected with morphine.

“No, we don’t do this on site, I thought it’d all been cleared already! He’s ripped to bits, I need a clairvoyant to make him tick. Look, I don’t do admin, just call my boss. Measure dicks with him, all right? He likes that.”

“You can’t possibly hope to contain him, if -”

“Oh, yeah, that’s so not going to be a problem.”

Eventually he’s unstrapped, put into a straitjacket, transported. The man is next to him in the car, stroking his shoulders.

“My name is Schuldig,” he says casually. “What’s yours?”

“Designation Winter Soldier,” he answers. His jaw muscles are stiff; he doesn’t talk much. Schuldig hums thoughtfully and cards his fingers through Winter Soldier’s overgrown hair.

There’s a constant upward pull inside his head, like gravity gone wrong, and he’s too disoriented to know where he’s going. That’s not the mission, anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

Brightness of the outdoor sun shocks him. He struggles for a moment, scrambling to stay in the car like bear in a cave. The world is too huge without a purpose or a destination, and he longs for his capsule. He even wants the debriefing. Another man pulls him out by the buckles on the jacket, slings him over one broad shoulder, carries him up the dark staircase and dumps him into a surprisingly comfy armchair.

They’re in a living room, in a civilian flat. There’s a child reading a math textbook on the sofa, and an albino teenager in a straitjacket snoring on the floor, with his head propped on a fake fur pillow.

“What’s this about?” asks Schuldig.

“I don’t know, his time of the month or whatever,” says the boy tiredly. “Your problem now, I’m off to bed - oh great, you brought another one.”

“It’s just an assignment. Few days, maybe. Hey, puppy, this is Brad, Nagi and Farfarello. You obey them like you obey me. That’s the mission.”

*

They don’t touch him for a very long time.

Well, no, they do. Schuldig’s hands are on him constantly: raking through his hair, stroking his face, resting on his pulse points. Brad touches him too, cautiously, briefly, as if looking for the right place. Head, chest, arms. He seems to prefer the metal one.

“Definitely something there,” he says, sliding his fingers over the seams. “Need to flush it out. Need more.”

Clairvoyance. Schuldig explains that at some point. Future shadows, trails of causality. A brittle, capricious gift, but when it works it’s worth it.

Schuldig’s gift is generous, ever-giving, brutal. He fills Winter Soldier like he’d fill a suit, takes every thought, holds it together when it crumbles, thinks it through until it swells to bursting, shoves it back in.

“What did you eat when you were in Moscow?”

He doesn’t know if he’s ever been to Moscow. A sour taste of dense rye bread spreads on his tongue, quickly turns sweet. It’s cut through with the heavy bite of garlic, mellow fatty herring, a bitter wash of dark, over-stewed tea.

“What did you eat when you were in Casablanca?”

Caramel, acid, warmth. Half of a lemon on his plate, baked soft, studded with cloves, covered in clumps of boiled grains. It must be just after the mission had been completed because he keeps stabbing his fork into the wilted spokes, gouging juicy flesh out. The mark had beautiful eyes - soft green, with radial honey-yellow streaks.

“Nagi, cross-reference that,” Schuldig mutters. “What did you eat when you were in Budapest?”

*

Eventually it happens. Schuldig gets antsy. There’s ever-present cruelty in his eyes, and now there’s a lot of lust.

“You’re so beautiful, puppy. Get on your knees.”

He obeys. He’s practised and efficient, ready to do anything that would further the mission.

Brad happens upon them, and he’s angry. Winter Soldier stays where he’s been left, waiting for the next command.

“It’s not a toy, Schuldig.”

“Everything is a toy, love.”

Brad grabs Schuldig by the arm and wrenches him up. Schuldig goes limp in his hold and laughs in his face.

“Yeah, come on, sweetheart, prove my point.”

Brad shoves him down and storms off. The momentum is broken, lust has dissipated. Schuldig hits Winter Soldier once, a quick backhand across the face, and some of his frustration fades too. He just looks tired now.

“Let’s work,” he says. “Take me back to that time in Munich.”

They work. He doesn’t remember, doesn’t know, he’s not supposed to. But somehow from barely anything, from the thinnest shards and slivers, a picture comes together. He’s on the trail again, tracing a route he’s already walked. His mark is close.

“Do you need me?” calls Nagi from the hallway. “He’s twitchy.”

“Nah, I’ve got him. Go, soldier. You see your target. Show me-”

He sees the target and makes his move.

“Idiot. You’re so lucky I’m watching your back,” says a child’s voice. The air around him is thick and heavy, and he can’t move, can’t see, can’t even twitch anymore. He struggles as long as he can and then lets himself fold under the crushing pressure.

*

Nagi isn’t as young as he looks, just short and scrawny. Winter Soldier watches him, his thin wrists and sharp knees, his fine, near-translucent skin. It feels like he hadn’t seen a child in years, and hopefully that's true.

He can’t remember ever being a child. He tries to imagine himself this small: his chest too narrow to even breathe right, his bones brittle like dry sticks, his blood thin and sluggish, his heart too weak to pump it, stuttering under strain. That’s probably not how children work. Children run and play and never get tired. Children laugh and fight and bleed and heal right away…

“Why is he staring at me?” asks Nagi, flicking through an old dossier, making quick notes. “What’s he thinking about?”

“Childhood,” Schuldig says. “Friendship, candy, all that shit.”

“Do you need his childhood? Because if not he should look elsewhere.”

“Do I, do I,” Schuldig mutters and pulls him deeper, into the echoing wells of dirty red brick walls. Smells of hot-dogs, radio blaring from the second floor window, ball bouncing off sun-baked ground, and he dives for it, and misses, and his friend laughs. There’s a bruise on his friend’s face, but he’ll heal. “Nah. Bucky, don’t look at Nagi.”

He turns his head and looks at the floor. The word rings inside his head in a high, clear child’s voice. Bucky, Bucky. Stop saving me, Bucky.

*

“Name it all you want,” Brad says. “You’re not keeping it.”

They leave him alone for a while to work through whatever Schuldig had shaken out of his head. Farfarello is tasked to watch him. He’s brought a bunch of knives to sharpen and he tests the edge on their skin in turns, watching in a somber trance as flesh parts and the wound fills with blood.

“Bucky,” he says, drawing long matching cuts on their right arms. “I’m wondering. Do you want to die? I’ll do it if you want.”

He can’t die. He’s very expensive. His directive is to save himself even if it means losing the target.

“I just want the mission,” he confesses. This isn’t real work, it’s not satisfying, and somehow being here makes him feel a cripple.

“I have a mission. You can come with me.”

It’s wonderful for a time - the purpose, the freedom to act and think, the promise of release. Farfarello lets him take point and Winter Soldier plans the hunt and the kill and takes his time working through it. The mark is well protected, and they draw the job out, making it a thorough, slow massacre. Farfarello takes childish joy in the bloodbath, and the Winter Soldier is almost bereft he can’t share it. His directive now is to be debriefed.

“It’s not a toy, Jay!” Brad yells when they stagger back in, reeking of blood, wrung out.

“I know, all right,” says Farfarello. “He’s not. He’s really good. I’d be better if I were like him. Is that why you brought him? To show us?”

“Congratulations, Farfarello, you’re the smartest person in the room,” says Brad. “I wanted to see for myself, too. We think we had it so rough and now we got it made. And we’re wrong. Because there’s this. This, children, is the future.”

“Come on, Brad, they wouldn’t do this to us,” says Nagi. “They need our gifts.”

“They’ve preserved his,” Brad shrugs. “This thing is still an excellent tactician. They destroy his personality over and over and he still functions perfectly. And if Schuldig is right they might have started on him as far back as the Forties. I'm sure they're even better at this now.”

Nagi shivers. Winter Soldier remembers not to look at him and lowers his eyes.

“One thing we all lack is empathy,” says Brad. “It’s difficult for us. But look at it, try to imagine. This is why we fight. This is why I need you all to stay focused. Look at him. He was about my age when they turned him into this.”

Schuldig gets up, silently crosses the room and locks himself in the bathroom.

“I need to know if that escapade had any effect on the work you did,” Brad calls after him. “If this is a setback…”

“It’s not,” answers Schuldig through the door. “Give me a moment. I’m focused. I’m fine.”

*

They’ve been giving him food from time to time - mostly cold cheeseburgers and bottled water. Now they’re all having dinner together at the kitchen table, like a family.

What has he eaten so far on this mission? Cheeseburgers, mashed potatoes, sticky rice balls, rib steak, sauerkraut, pears, ice-cream. He wonders if Schuldig started with food memories because they’re never fully debriefed, too inconsequential to bother with. He might remember this later.

When they’re done eating Schuldig pulls out a packet of cigarettes and Bucky reaches over and crushes it in his metal fist.

“You tell him, T-800,” laughs Nagi.

“What the fuck, Bucky?” sputters Schuldig. “Since when you’re the health police?”

“Don’t smoke around me. My friend has asthma,” Bucky says.

That comes out of nowhere. He’s no idea if that’s even true. A long awkward silence hangs around the table, like at a memorial.

*

There’s a sea of papers spread on the floor on the living room: Schuldig’s notes on what he’s pulled from Bucky’s brain, files and dossiers to cross-reference it with. The men are checking it and piecing it together, focused and relentless.

“Decades of wet work,” says Brad. “Motherlode.”

Their task was to recover data from a recent mission, and that’s been done already. He’s gathered enough from their conversations to know they’re planning to keep the rest and use it for defection or insurgence. They can’t let him take this knowledge to the debriefing, they have to realise this. He’s not sure how this will end. He might have to kill them all.

For now he’s quite enjoying their company. He naps in his armchair, roams the flat, gets snacks out of the fridge, does push-ups, showers, drinks beer, indulgently arm-wrestles Farfarello and lets Schuldig play with his brain. Not much he can do to stop that.

“How are you doing this, really?” Brad asks. “They were so sure the memories were gone!”

“The only way to properly do it is to fuse fake memories over the cuts, so it’s all jumbled,” says Schuldig. “They never let him heal up, that’s their mistake. There’s no connective tissue. Just open edges to pinch together. Like this.”

He does something, and Bucky blurts out another string of names and numbers, and they all frantically scribble it down. He doesn’t even need to talk, Schuldig hears him anyway, but somehow it’s liberating. Pleasant even.

“They’ve no idea how good you are, do they?” Brad says, his voice unusually soft with pride and affection.

“Nope. Everyone thinks you keep me around for my stunning beauty.”

Schuldig really is a beauty, languid and radiant. Bucky’s not noticed that before. It’s as if this lanky, pale ginger kid only just lit up with brilliant inner glow - or this could be another trick he’s good at.

“Stop it,” says Brad helplessly and then reaches for Schuldig and they kiss, deeply, slowly, relishing each other, and sink down onto the carpet, crumpling the spread papers.

“Seriously?” says Nagi. “In front of him? Go to your bedroom, pervs!”

“Let men sin how they choose,” says Farfarello. Both boys mostly ignore the display, like that’s nothing out of the ordinary.

“Yeah, let Bucky watch, he’s not had any fun in decades,” murmurs Schuldig against Brad’s lips. “Brad, can we-”

“No.”

“No, okay, it’s just he’s so pretty…”

They keep kissing, comfortably sprawled by Bucky’s feet, and he watches them idly. He doesn’t know if there ever had been anything like that, not on orders, just for fun, just for pleasure, for love.

Brad’s fingers gently move on Schuldig’s skin where his shirt’s collar falls open, and the sight trips something up in him. That, or the waves of sticky heat that roll from Schuldig’s thoughts into his.

Bucky sees himself sliding his palms over sharp collarbones, resting his hands on familiar shoulders. His friend is straddling his lap, pinning him down; he’s kind of bony, but so light that it doesn’t matter. His smile is soft and serene, the best smile in the world. His heart is hammering under Bucky’s fingers, he can even see that skinny chest jump a little with every stuttering beat. That’s not nerves, though, that’s chronic hypertension. Steve doesn’t get scared. He probably can’t, like he can’t tell red from green.

Bucky is a little afraid, despite being mad with need. This is too huge, a whole undiscovered country. But wherever Steve goes Bucky will follow, so he cups Steve’s face in his hands and leans in.

“Bucky, you stud,” Schuldig laughs. “Don’t be coy, show me more!”

He tries to resist. He doesn’t want this out in the open, for his handlers to play with. He doesn’t want to think it at all. This probably isn’t true, just a fake memory, an old fantasy, connective tissue he’s growing over the cuts because he’s been off the ice for so long. He’d rather keep it clean, a good wound.

Schuldig shoves himself in, probes around, there’s no stopping him. He has a better hold on Bucky’s thoughts than he himself does. He sees this more clearly and understands it better. Bucky jumps out of the chair and staggers back.

“Don’t, it’s not real,” he pleads, and of course it’s not. Steve isn’t thin or frail. Steve is exactly like Steve had always imagined himself to be in his reckless, boundless bravery: an indestructible mountain of a man, a perfect shield to stop any bully, all the evil in the world.

“Holy fuck, I know who Steve is,” Schuldig shoves Brad off and sits on his heels. “This is brilliant! Oh hell, I think I went too deep. He’s coming together, he might actually remember…”

“Let’s stop,” says Nagi. “Let’s not do that to him.”

“Yes, we have enough,” Brad gets up and tries to grab him, and Bucky is going to fight. He’s going to keep this. He moves for a kill, but Nagi’s gift is already holding him in a suffocating cocoon, crushing him to the floor. Brad’s hand is on his metal arm and his eyes are wide and empty.

“Everything is coming together,” Brad whispers. “I see it. Fire, destruction, such a perfect fall. It’s all we want. We need him. He’s the linchpin. He’s the future.”

He still struggles but they have him pinned down, all four of them. Schuldig presses his hands to Bucky’s temples.

“Bucky, listen, listen,” he says over Bucky’s howls of rage. “This will stay. You’ll always know him. I promise. Whatever I do to you now, whatever they’ll do to you back at the base, this will always be with you. Nobody can take it away. When the time comes you’ll know him.”

And then it starts, and it hurts less than when the machine does it, but it’s not as quick, it lasts forever.

*

The mission is completed and he’s back at the base. They tell him he did well. He feels he’s already been debriefed, but they’re going to do it again.

“Never trust a freak,” they say as he lets them strap him into the chair. “They might have tried some reprogramming. Wipe him extra clean.”

He usually hates the moment just before it starts but this time he’s perfectly calm. Whatever they do, he’ll be fine.


End file.
